The present invention generally relates to supply chain business computer program products and computer-implemented methods that facilitate equipment maintenance for one or more customers and, more particularly, relates to methods, configurations, computer-readable mediums, and integrated systems of systems for supply chain software to manage inventories of parts used to maintain equipment.
In order to reduce lifecycle support costs, government and commercial entities outsource support for equipment. This provides vendors with a profitable opportunity to bid to maintain the very equipment that they build. Such opportunities include Performance Based Logistics (PBL), Life Cycle Customer Support (LCCS), and Programmed Depot Maintenance (PDM) programs for managing the supply chain for maintaining equipment.
Known Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) software typically meets some, but not all, business requirements for successfully managing these PBL, LCCS, and PDM programs. For example, such COTS software may not necessarily maximize the availability of critical equipment at minimum cost in order to manage healthy PBL, LCCS, and PDM programs, and manage the maintenance of equipment, including spare parts and repair services, throughout the lifecycle of the equipment; integrate and configure to meet a supply chain service provider's business requirements and those of its customers; and generate configurable business reports and custom developed software extensions.
Such COTS programs also may not integrate the supply chain service provider's and customer legacy data systems, manage inventories of spare parts by tracking management metrics to monitor the health of the supply chain, minimize the lifecycle cost of supporting the equipment, for example, managing categories of parts, such as consumables, obsolete parts, mechanical parts, electrical parts, depot maintenance, equipment being phased out, equipment being deployed for the first time, and deployable spares packages for field use away from the main operating location.
Inventory optimization companies have specialized solutions for determining inventory stocking levels and reorder points for single or multiple stocking locations. Known supply chain software solution vendors have well developed solutions for optimizing inventory stock levels, performing day-to-day asset management to maintain the optimized levels over time, and maintaining data in an integrated database. Known simulation vendors have developed Monte Carlo models which can reduce risk by evaluating the impact of inventory stocking decisions in a dynamic world before orders are placed. Known vendors of statistical analysis software have software that will determine the statistical distribution (such as Poisson, negative binomial, or normal) which best fits a stream of events. Consulting companies integrate software solutions from multiple vendors to meet the global needs of supply chain vendors.
However, in the typical case, individual department functions are compartmentalized and information is maintained in individual “buckets”, leading to duplication of effort, inconsistencies between data sources, and lack of visibility into inventory across departments, organizations, vendors, and customers. In addition, known supply chain solution vendors have well developed solutions which integrate only the strategic, tactical, inventory management, and data repository functions. The use of simulation to reduce risk by verifying the results of an inventory analysis before committing to buy parts typically is not an integral feature of the product lines of today's supply chain vendors.
Others have attempted to re-optimize the entire network of service parts when doing tactical analysis on a day-to-day basis. This (a) leads to software performance issues when multiple asset managers are attempting to re-optimize the networks at the same time, or (b) leads to reductions in capability when “what if” analyses are restricted to overnight runs, resulting in a day wait before receiving results.
Known supply chain solutions use data repositories to duplicate the information required to manage assets. In order to interact with external systems, asset managers typically log onto these systems and cut and paste data. Also, known supply chain solutions provide some, but not all, components required to successfully manage a supply chain for maintenance parts. Customers must know their future process ahead of time to determine which tools, from which vendors, enable the complete process.